children, Michael, Anne and Susan, with Michael also coming to Dulwich, as a boarder. At present Gwyneth and Susan live in Melbourne, Australia, and Michael and Anne both live in South Africa with all three of the grandchildren. With David and Gwyneth in Australia and all their grandchildren in South Africa, that gave them a good reason to continue travelling extensively. In retirement, David also developed his talent as a trumpeter with the Hobart Veterans Band and was able to pursue his interest in Admiral Lord Nelson. It would be impossible to determine how many lives have been touched by David and Gwyneth, but looking at their movements around the world, David’s was truly a life of adventure and service. Susan Klee contributed significantly to this obituary.
through Grade 6 violin with the pass mark of 100 while in the sixth form. He initially showed flair and interest in languages, but in the end, he headed towards more analytical subjects by doing double Maths and Physics at A level. All of Dulwich’s four Oxbridge Maths scholarship candidates that year were successful, which was quite a feat at the time, and John went to Queen’s College, Oxford with his Maths scholarship in 1959. At Oxford, he continued his dual passions of music and performing, singing in Queen’s College Chapel choir, as well as both playing violin and dancing with the University Morris Men, leading to his becoming Squire of the University Morris side in 1962, the same year as he graduated with an MA (Oxon) degree. His increasing interest in approximation theory, coupled with a curiosity for the growing field of computing led him to begin his postgraduate studies at Oxford’s Computing Laboratory, completing a DPhil thesis in 1965 examining “Some new Approximations for the Solution of Differential Equations”. He was appointed to his first academic role at the University of Maryland, USA, and it appeared that John was embarking on a serious academic career in Mathematics, but he was not easily pigeon-holed, and was soon playing violin for the university’s Symphony Orchestra. His main distraction in America in the mid-1960s was to form a touring sketch comedy group at the height of the satire boom. Named ‘Mad(e) in England’, the group consisted of English expat academics, and John’s songwriting and quick wit as a performer were put to good use satirising the news and current affairs of the time. It was common
for satirical acts to play on cabaret bills with musicians in those days, and thus Mad(e) in England found themselves treading the boards and warming the audience for such luminaries as Charlie Byrd, Mose Allison and Jose Feliciano in venues around the Washington DC area. In the end the academic careers of the group started to eclipse their stage success, and John moved to the University of Toronto in 1967. There his research and teaching flourished and he devoted time to inspiring the next generation of mathematicians. Away from Maths, he bought a cabin in Canada, and took up skiing but he broke his ankle. In 1972, he returned to England to develop a new career as an actor and writer. Living in Notting Hill, which was then still affordable, he juggled working as a journalist for Computer Weekly with his developing career as a writer. He came in contact with BBC Producer Simon Brett, another OA and Oxford graduate, who quickly assimilated John into his enviable pool of writers for the long-running Week ending sketch show. In order to broaden his experience still further, he studied acting at the City Literary Institute (City Lit) and, encouraged by fellow student Moya Churchill, he decided to go to drama school full time. He attended the Webber Douglas School of Dramatic Art for two years, while keeping up his freelance BBC writing in the evenings. Ultimately though, he decided that the pull of Maths and its regular income was too great. While looking for a return to academia, he mounted one last stage project – a well received and reviewed Edinburgh Festival act called The Unpleasantness at Brodie’s Close. John was appointed at the Royal Military College of Science (RMCS) at Shrivenham, Wiltshire and turned his back on
Professor John Charles Mason [1951-59] 05.03.1941 – 27.09.2016
John Mason’s father was a draper at the Army & Navy Stores and his mother was a primary school teacher. He grew up
in Herne Hill and came to the College from Dulwich Hamlet school in the village. At the college he was in Spenser and soon developed interests in music and performing, playing violin in the Orchestra and singing treble and eventually tenor in the Choir. He particularly remembered singing in the choir at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. Violin lessons gave him a key instrument for composing and accompanying in later life, though he found the rigours of music grade exams something of a chore, scraping
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